C5 Chapter Five

Just before Vespers the three sergeants from Echo reassembled together in a secure conference room awaiting the arrival of Preceptor Willem Johannson, the man who had taken over after Michaels perished in the commandery assaults three weeks earlier.

Riley and Flynn arrived first, with Duncan wandering in a few moments later. Echo’s newest member was quiet, withdrawn, but no one thought anything of it, considering Cade’s current condition. A moment or two after Duncan’s arrival the Preceptor arrived. With him was a short, barrel-chested man in standard issue battle dress uniform, or BDU, with a Captain’s insignia on the shoulders. They settled into seats opposite the members of Echo and the Preceptor didn’t waste any time in getting down to business.

“We’ve got a dangerous situation brewing that needs to be dealt with quickly and decisively. Bravo and Delta are off cleaning up that mess in Argentina. Alpha is at half-strength and Charlie is still enroute from Moscow. That leaves you. I know your team leader is currently unavailable, but Echo is all I’ve got.”

Johannson was tall and thin, with long arms that moved restlessly about whenever he spoke, reminding Duncan of a praying mantis. The man’s regal attitude and obvious sense of self-importance reinforced the comparison, causing Duncan to take an instant dislike to him. The transfer to Echo had been difficult, there was no question of that, but in the long run he suspected that working for a man like Johannson would be a kind of slow torture all its own and he was glad that he was no longer in the charge of the Preceptor’s security detail.

Riley ignored the thinly veiled distaste in the Preceptor’s tone when referring to Commander Williams and simply nodded his acceptance of the situation.

The Preceptor indicated the man seated beside him, “Captain Mason here is with the unit on the ground. He will conduct the briefing and answer any questions you have. Captain Mason?”

Mason was the physical opposite of Johannson and he projected an air of experience that commanded authority. He stood, saying, “Thank you, sir.” He stepped away from the table and over to the podium. Removing a small remote from his pocket, he used it to trigger the ceiling projector. A photograph of a smiling man dressed in the black clothes of a Catholic priest appeared on the screen. He was in his late forties or early fifties, with a full head of dark hair and the tanned complexion of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors.

“This is Father Juan Vargas, a Jesuit archeologist. He has spent his entire life sifting the dirt of the Holy Land through his hands, looking for physical evidence of the life of Christ. Many consider him one of the finest expedition leaders of our time and his work has uncovered priceless artifacts supporting biblical scholarship. From discovering the home of Pontius Pilate just outside of Jerusalem to excavating the secret tunnels discovered beneath the fortress of Masada, Vargas has been at the forefront of some of the most important archeological discoveries of the last four decades.

“He’s also had his share of failures, however. Entire expeditions that were based on nothing more than rumors. Wild goose chases that bled the coffers of many a foundation dry, with nothing to show for it in the end but handfuls of dust. From Noah’s Ark to the Ark of the Covenant, Vargas has chased them all.

“A little over three years ago, Vargas abruptly disappeared after a failed dig on the shore of the Dead Sea. Some say he deliberately went into hiding, unwilling or unable to face the wrath of his creditors. Others believe that his health was failing and that the constant strain of the expeditionary life was finally too much for him. Whatever the reason, he disappeared and no one has seen nor heard from him since.

“Until nine days ago, that is.”

The image on the screen changed. The new photo showed a man in a hospital bed. Though his face was badly sunburned and he had several days overgrowth of beard, it was clearly Father Vargas.

“Vargas was found wandering in the desert outside of Santa Limas, New Mexico last Wednesday. From his condition, it was clear he’d been exposed to the elements for several days. He was badly sunburned and dangerously dehydrated. There is no hospital in Santa Limas, so the locals brought him to the parish priest. When the priest discovered the injured man was a fellow member of the clergy, he contacted his bishop. The bishop had actually met Vargas at a seminar several years before. Recognizing him, he arranged to have him transferred to St. Margaret’s, a private Catholic hospital in Albuquerque. Once he was stabilized, we…”

The door to the conference room opened and Mason stopped in mid-sentence, his expression of surprise clear to those seated at the table.

As one they turned to see the source of the disruption.

Knight Commander Cade Williams stood framed in the doorway.

Duncan and the others stared in disbelief.

Two hours ago Cade was lying immobile in a hospital bed, so weak he needed an intravenous line to feed him and an oxygen line to help him breathe. His physician had predicted it would be a month, maybe more, before Cade recovered enough to move about on his own, never mind return to active duty. Yet here he stood, seemingly healed. His face showed signs of weariness and there was a dark, haunted look in his eyes, but his flesh no longer looked stretched taught over his bones and the sickly yellow hue was gone from his skin.

He crossed the room and took a seat in the empty chair next to Riley. He nodded to Captain Mason and then addressed the Preceptor, “My apologies for being late, sir. I was briefly detained on another matter.” His voice was a harsh rasp, like that of a twenty-year smoker, rather than its usual even tone, but that seemed to be the extent of his troubles.

Preceptor Johannson stared at Cade with a horrified expression on his face, as if Cade’s very presence proved that all of the dark and dangerous rumors that were whispered about him were true. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, only to close it again before doing so, unable or unwilling to give voice to what he was thinking.

The silence stretched like a living thing.

Duncan stared down the length of the table at his commanding officer. Like the others, he was startled by Cade’s appearance. He’d wrestled with his conscience long and hard beside the man’s hospital bed, but in the end he’d done nothing more than get down on his knees and pray for the Knight Commander’s recovery. While he’d been sorely tempted to lay his hands on him, he’d resisted the urge, believing that his gift should be used only in the direst of circumstances. While Cade’s injuries had been bad, he’d certainly passed beyond the life-threatening stage once he’d arrived at the hospital and so Duncan had refrained from taking any action beyond simple prayer.

Yet here Cade was, seemingly healed and ready to join Echo on its forthcoming mission.

Thoughts of prayers and powers and destiny itself chased each other through Duncan’s mind.

It was Captain Mason who finally stepped into the gap, breaking the silence. He coughed into his fist, said, “Good to have you with us, Knight Commander,” and went on with his briefing as if nothing had happened.

“The circumstances being what they were, the Order was called in to investigate. A three-man team, including myself, was sent out to speak with Father Vargas. When we arrived at St. Margaret’s, we found him to be alternating between spells of manic activity and near catatonia. When he was lucid, if you could call it that, he would rant and rave, screaming and crying and mumbling, throwing himself against his restraints, until the hospital staff was forced to sedate him to keep him from hurting himself.”

Flynn spoke up, “Was anything he said coherent?”

“Not much. Most of it was gibberish, odd phrases and sounds that seemed to mimic a language, but unlike anything we’ve ever heard before. We’ve since had the tapes analyzed for linguistic continuity and similarity, thinking it might be a dialect we simply aren’t familiar with, but came up dry. If it was a language, it’s one we’ve never heard of.

“We had Vargas transferred to the custody of the Church and took him to our medical facility in New York. There we were able to monitor him twenty-four hours a day and every second of it was caught on video. Upon reviewing the tapes, we discovered this.”

Mason touched a button on his remote and a video began to run on the screen behind him. In it, Vargas was flat on his back on a bed and was secured with restraints. He was tossing his head from side to side, a endless stream of nonsense pouring from his mouth, his eyes tightly closed. This went on for a full minute or two and Duncan was about to ask why this was relevant when Vargas stopped moving. Very slowly he turned his head to face the camera and his eyes popped open wide. Then he spoke with deliberate clarity.

“He’s waiting for you. There in the Garden. Waiting to show you the truth. If you have the courage to face it.”

Mason paused the tape at that point, leaving Vargas to stare out of the screen at those assembled. “We’ve got four days of tape. That’s the only coherent moment in any of them.”

“Do you have any idea what he is talking about?”

The captain turned to face Riley. “No, not really. He was reportedly raving about the apocalypse and quoting from the Book of Revelation when he was first discovered outside of Santa Limas, so some of the doctors think this is more of the same. The Garden possibly being a reference to the Garden of Eden and the he Vargas is referring to being the serpent. Personally, I’m not so sure, but that’s simply a gut level reaction and I don’t have any concrete evidence one way or the other.”

“If you have Vargas in custody and he’s no real threat to anyone, what do you need Echo for?” asked Flynn.

“Captain Mason is getting to that,” replied the Preceptor, the first words he’d spoken since Cade had entered the room.

“Right,” answered Mason. “Vargas was given a thorough medical exam by our own physicians and they discovered something the doctors at St. Margaret’s had not. A series of numbers were tattooed on the inside of Vargas lower lip. The tattoo was crude, obviously homemade, and the numbers were backward, as if Vargas had done it himself in the mirror.

“After further investigation, we determined that the numbers were a set of GPS coordinates. They led us here.”

Another click of the remote and Vargas’ wide-eyed grimace was replaced with an aerial shot of a compound somewhere in the desert. Several buildings were surrounded by a wide fenced perimeter, with a single dirt road leading to and from the compound.

“It’s an old military base hidden in the canyons about thirty miles north of Santa Limas, abandoned and mothballed since the close of the Korean War. When my people looked into it, they learned that it had been leased to a holding company based out of the Caymans three years ago, roughly six months after Vargas disappeared from view.”

“Have your people been on-site?” Cade asked.

Mason looked uncomfortable for the first time. “Yes. We set up operations around the perimeter and then sent in an advance squad to take a look around.” He paused, obviously struggling with how to express exactly what he wanted to say. “They…” He shook his head, and then looked down at the floor. “None of the team survived.”

The room was silent for a moment.

“Can you be more specific, sir?”

Mason nodded. “We sent in a full squad, eight men. They were tied into the Ops Net, so we could see and hear everything they did in real time. At first, things went just fine. They searched the few remaining structures and were getting ready to come back out when one of the team discovered a hatch in the floor of the base garage. The hatch appeared to lead to another level of structure, this one underground.

“The squad checked in and I gave the order for them to continue their search. They were preparing to descend into the lower levels when everything came apart.

“We lost the video feed almost immediately. We still had the audio, however, and we could hear several of the men shouting and firing at something that we suspect came out of the tunnel. Within seconds we lost contact with all of them.”

Mason paused, obviously still dismayed over the loss of his men. After a moment to get himself under control, he continued. “Another team was gearing up to go in after them when one man made it back out of the compound. Cpl. Jackson’s left arm was missing and he had a gaping wound in his chest. The medics got to work immediately but everyone knew it was a losing battle right from the start.

“Jackson was nearly hysterical, raving about a gateway to hell and the demons that had come boiling up out of it, but we were unable to get anything of tactical value out of him before he passed.” Mason looked at each of them in turn. “I can’t tell you what he saw, but whatever it was, it scared him silly. Hell, he scared us, just by talking about it. And it took his life along with lives of the seven other men. After that, the decision was made to have the second team stand down while we brought in the heavy guns.”

Preceptor Johannson spoke up again. “That’s where Echo comes in. I’m ordering you to accompany Captain Mason back to the site and determine just what killed those men. When you do, you are authorized to deal with it as you see fit.” He turned and looked at Cade. “Are you up to this, Commander?”

Cade nodded but said nothing.

Duncan wasn’t surprised; he couldn’t imagine Echo being sent out without its commander and he knew it would take more than a doctor or two to keep Cade from joining his unit when they were headed into danger. He was still wondering just how the Commander had pulled it off when Cade glanced surreptitiously in his direction and winked.

As the meeting broke up around him and the rest of the men headed for the door, Duncan found himself frozen in his seat, his thoughts whirling.

Good Lord, Duncan thought, he thinks I did it. He thinks I healed him!

But he knew he hadn’t. And that brought him back to the issue that had been bothering him ever since Cade had stepped into the room.

If he hadn’t done it, who had?